Israeli army kills 6 people in West Bank: Palestinian ministry

Israeli troops killed six Palestinians in the occupied West Bank on Saturday, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said.

A 25-year-old doctor was killed early in the morning outside his home in Qabatiya, near Jenin, a stronghold of Palestinian armed groups in the north of the territory, the ministry said.

Another Palestinian was killed in el-Bireh, near Ramallah.

Four people were also killed by Israeli army fire in Jenin, during an incursion by a large number of armored vehicles into the town, which was recently the scene of the deadliest Israeli raid in the West Bank in almost 20 years.

Witnesses told AFP on Saturday that the Israeli army was surrounding Jenin’s public hospital and the Ibn Sina clinic, and that soldiers were searching ambulances.

They also reported heavy fighting with automatic weapons.

The West Bank has seen an uptick in violence since the October 7 cross-border attack on Israel by Hamas last month, in which militants from the Gaza Strip killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, according to the Israeli authorities.

Israel has since responded with a bombing and land campaign in Gaza, killing nearly 15,000 people, also mostly civilians, according to the Hamas government.

All the while, some 230 Palestinians in the West Bank have been killed by Israeli settlers and soldiers, according to the Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Health.